Monday, December 20, 2010

Apparently CanadaPost delivers parcels on weekends during the holiday seasons. What a surprise it was to receive a figure several days earlier than you expected.

Front and back.

Side and bottom.

The box's design is quite nice. It features the original illustration and pictures of the actual figure.The sides have windows shaped as stars which is pretty neat. All the stars features on the box gives it an illusion as if Marisa is shooting danmaku at you. What really surprised me was the background used inside the box. Yes, it's more stars, but it was quite a surprise.

Here she is assembled with her stand. It wasn't too hard to put together, but it was a bit nerve-wrecking due to all the pegs and the angles they slid in. The star rotates allowing you to position Marisa flying in several directions, like in the picture above. The pose also reminds me of her spell card "Comet Blazing Star". The part connecting the star to the base can also move up and down slightly allowing a bit more freedom.

You may be wondering how the hat stays on if Marisa can be positioned in various angles. Is it amazing grooves like Nendoroid Remilia? Nope, even better. Magnets. The hat has no chance of falling off with this secure method. I thought it might be hard positioning the hat, but I found that the small dip in the hat was the indicator of how it should be positioned. That combined with the bow on the hat, made it easy.

It's okay, Marisa. I prefer flat.

Bloomers. A must have for witches.

Her outfit may not be 100% canon, but the detail on it is great. The broom is detailed to the very bit and it fits quite snugly on Marisa's tush. The way her hand gently rests on the broom is a nice feeling as well. It makes me think that Marisa is steering herself by leaning slightly on the stick. She also has a belt buckled around her left ankle for some reason. I'm not complaining though.

There was some flaws with the pegs on the broom. It seems many others had problems with the pegs also. As for mine, the two pegs that are inserted into the holes shown above, did not fit completely. I had to file them down a bit for them to fit.

The peg to put Marisa onto the star slid in perfectly. The bow to Marisa's apron is placed onto the star's peg before Marisa making it a separate piece from Marisa. There's also something special about the star for this figure. At the bottom of the base are two slots for AA batteries and a switch. If turned on the star glows...

Very poorly.

You cannot see the glow unless the room is completely pitch black, making the whole thing pointless as you can't see the figure. I went through six batteries thinking they were dead before I realized the bulb was just that craptacular. I thought about changing the bulb, but I have no idea how to take apart the base and star. There might be screws under the four pads beneath the base, but it looks like I would have to rip it off just to check. Oh well, the bulb isn't that big of a deal anyways. It is disappointing however.

Close-up of her face and a back shot.

The instruction sheet.

Overall, I'm enjoying this Marisa figure a fair bit. The detail on it is amazing and easily overshadows it's slight flaws in the broom and light bulb. It's initial release date was last year around this month so it might be hard to find. I was lucky and found a new one off Mandarake. It was only 8000 Yen too, only 500 more than it's retail cost. Kotobukiya is also releasing another Marisa figure in April. You can check it out over at AmiAmi.

Marisa Kirisame by Kotobukiya

+ Very detailed

+ Intricate Pose

+ Magnetic hat

+ BONUS ITEMS

- Terrible pegs on broom

- Light bulb is useless

BONUSITEMS

This Marisa figure comes with one of the two sets of bonus items. The first has a Marisa phone card, a mini-hakkero balloon, and two stickers for the base. The second set has card holder and a strap. Which one it came with depended on where you ordered. Mine came with the first set.

The phone card came in a cute small envelope. I haven't applied the stickers because my autistic mind would never forgive me if I happened to screw it up slightly. The balloon barely fits in my hand, but then again these small Asian hands also love the PS3 controller size.

Since I was already taking pictures, here's a new shot of part of my closet. I've placed a cutout of Momiji to ward off intruders from Figure Mountain. I know she won't fail me, but I've been surprised recently... At least she's loyal.

I couldn't even tell that the star was glowing, it seemed more like you had flash on in the dark and a bit of light was reflecting off the surface from it.

And did you just use normal printer paper with an exacto-knife for your cutout? It looks like it has a border, so did you perhaps cut through the page by making a border with pen thick enough to "punch" the image out?

Marisa weighs too much for that! Her hat does stick to the fridge with no problems though.

As for the Momiji cut-out, I used normal printer paper, but if you have anything thicker, I would use that. There's actually a template for it here, since it had a thick border I just used scissors to cut it out. You also have to make a thick strip of paper to attach to the back to make it more stable, shown here.